Yu Yangyi and Li Chao share first place in Indonesia Open Championship

Thursday, 18 October 2012 15:57

The final round of play saw Ivan Sokolov opt for the exchange variation of the Slav and attempt to squeeze out a win against tournament leader Yu Yangyi who was happy with a draw and with accurate defence he easily got it.

On the other board played on the stage, second placed defending championLi Chao also faced the Slav defence but opted instead to play the mainline. His efforts finally paid off when Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son made a mistake after holding the balance for much of the game.

Li’s win meant that he ended in a tie with Yu for first place with 7.5/9 but still lost out to the even young man on tiebreaks.

Li Chao – Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son

In third place half a point behind on 6.5/9 is Sokolov who is joined by Vladislav Tkachiev who drew Viorel Iordachescu, Sergey Fedorchuk who out-manouvered Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, Surya Sekhar Ganguly who beat Nguyen Duc Hoa to spoil his GM norm hopes, Dimitri Bocharov who outplayed Haridas Pascua, Oleg Korneev who won quickly when Lu Shanglei’s speculative play in an Evans Gambit went horribly wrong, and Marat Dzhumaev beating Merab Gagunasvili after the later lost a piece when grabbing a poisoned pawn.

Further back on six points were Nguyen, Viorel Iordachescu, Lou Yiping and Avetik Grigoryan.

GM Lu Shanglei took the prize for best junior while WGM Pham Le Thao Nguyen was the best woman player.

In a field with 33 Grandmasters, there were many opportunities for title norms and these were achieved by Wei Yi (GM Norm), Haridas Pascua, Pham Le Thao Nguyen, Wan Yunguo, Gui Qi, and Hamdani Rudin (IM Norm).